Last year, speculation swirled around the possibility that Brown might be a “dark horse” candidate for president. NBC News’ Chuck Todd suggested that Brown might be the party’s strongest candidate. Brown demurred, saying he would have run if he had been ten years younger.

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Garza, however, re-introduces speculation that the fourth-term governor, who has enjoyed consistently high approval ratings and has restored a modicum of fiscal health to the Golden State, might be a factor in the 2016 contest. He argues that Brown would be a stronger candidate than others who are often mentioned in the media, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA):

Surprisingly, there’s one I haven’t heard in the mix: Jerry Brown.

I’m not sure why. Maybe it is his age. Brown just turned 78, and despite the longevity in his family (his mother lived to 93; his father, former Gov. Pat Brown, to 90), it is on high side. Vice President Joe Biden is 73. Or maybe it’s just the usual East Coast bias that makes it hard for the political media establishment to see anything west of the Mississippi.

Brown seems an obvious candidate to me. He will be halfway through his fourth and final term as California governor when the next president is sworn in, and it has been a successful run. (We gave him a B-plus last fall, the highest grade of all our politician report cards last year.)

Brown, Garza argues, has several advantages: he is familiar; he appeals to some Republicans (even if they do not like his high-speed rail project); he has a sense of humor; and he is “post-partisan,” able to reach across the political aisle.

Garza adds that the success of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) negates the age argument, because “so many young Democrats seem to relish having a cranky septuagenarian lecture them about the correct way to think.”